It's time for another Jew thread

[blackie]

[youtube]H-rO-sUb0DE[/youtube]

[Sam Gunn (since nobody got Admiral Naismith)]

In the last 3 days over 70 missiles were fired into Israel. A bomb was strapped to a phone booth at a Jerusalem bus station, killing one and seriously injuring 3 others. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the house of the Fogel family and murdered Rabbi Fogel, his wife and 3 of his 6 children with a kitchen knife. None of this has been given media coverage.

[blackie]

In the last 3 days over 70 missiles were fired into Israel. A bomb was strapped to a phone booth at a Jerusalem bus station, killing one and seriously injuring 3 others. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the house of the Fogel family and murdered Rabbi Fogel, his wife and 3 of his 6 children with a kitchen knife. None of this has been given media coverage.

1. It's still unknown who killed the Fogel family. Do you have any proof to back up your claim that it was a Palestinian? I think it must have been a ninja, or the Mossad, as they left no evidence.

2. All of this has gotten media coverage. I read about it every day. I also read jews complaining about how it's not getting enough media coverage, especially after they decided to release the picture of the dead kids, and no one wanted to publish them.

3. You left out the seizing of the Victoria ship cargo last week, which had C-704 anti-ship missles.

The IDF released a preliminary list on Wednesday of the weaponry found on the Victoria ship.

The ship's cargo included: 230 mortar shells 120 mm, 2,270 mortar shells, 60 mm, 6 C-704 anti-ship missiles, 2 radar systems manufactured in England, 2 launchers, 2 hydraulic mounting cranes for the radar system and 66,960 bullets for Kalashnikov rifles.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-s-latest-pr-bid-has-failed-1.349676

Israel's latest PR bid has failed

Netanyahu wants to sell the missiles' capture as proof of the Palestinians' murderous intentions, but the U.S. and Europe clearly distinguish between the PA and Islamic organizations.

Israel's chance of achieving political or PR gain out of the takeover of the Iranian missile shipment to Gaza was limited from the start. The authorities' strange conduct at the display at the Ashdod port yesterday reduced it to zero.

The intelligence community, which provided early and accurate information about the weapons on the ship the Victoria, did impressive work this week. The naval commandos also accomplished their mission flawlessly. But in the present circumstances, it's very hard to translate the achievement into diplomatic currency.

The problem is not only the world media coverage, which is mostly dedicated to the disaster in Japan this week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is still thwarting the American and European pressure to initiate a move toward the Palestinians, wants to sell the missiles' capture as proof of the Palestinians' murderous intentions. On the face of it, after the horrific massacre in Itamar last weekend, this should have been an easy task for a super spin doctor like Netanyahu.

The problem is that the world is in no hurry to buy the Israeli argument. The United States and Europe make a clear distinction between the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic organizations. When the Karine-A weapons ship was captured in January 2002, Israel provided solid intelligence showing that the shipment was intended for Yasser Arafat's men. That was enough for the Bush administration to cut off relations with Arafat's regime, which encouraged suicide attacks while swearing commitment to the Oslo Accords.

This time, the missiles seized on the Victoria were intended for Hamas or Islamic Jihad, while Netanyahu's (partly justified ) arguments about the PA's incitement are not causing much of a media stir.

As far as the international community is concerned, the murder of the Fogel couple and three of their children was perpetrated by extreme Palestinians, whose leaders the PA has washed its hands of. Moreover, it is disappointing to find out that most denunciations of the murder, from Washington to Moscow, are not much more than various foreign ministries' lip service to Israel's demands. The world sees the West Bank hills as the Wild West, in which Israel is persistently annexing Palestinian farmers' lands. Even Friday night's barbaric massacre failed to evoke a wave of sympathy for the settlers' pain.

The navy made all the preparations for Netanyahu's visit on the dock. The soldiers labored all night unloading the containers. The weapons piles were placed on the dock in exemplary order, with the mortar shells all pointing south toward Gaza, parallel to the waterline.

From this point, things started to go wrong. The Shin Bet's VIP protection unit, which has been functioning seemingly in a world of its own since Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, detained a large batch of foreign journalists for more than an hour before beginning the security checks. No wonder many of them got tired of waiting and left.

Presumably they weren't too enthusiastic to begin with over what they saw as an Israeli propaganda display. None of the foreign networks thought of cutting their broadcasts from Tokyo for Netanyahu's speech to the world.

Maybe the Shin Bet's restrictions are necessary. Maybe there is no way to compromise on the prime minister's security and streamline the checking process (though plenty of people in the government and the Israel Defense Forces believe otherwise ). In this case, this is not the issue. The issue is, was it really imperative for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to appear at the display at the dock if they couldn't do so in the presence of the foreign media? After all, they had both already made televised statements on the matter on Tuesday.

Couldn't they make do with sending down a team from the Government Press Office, which could later distribute video of Netanyahu grimly surveying the loot? It appears Netanyahu and Barak couldn't resist, yet again. The entire event reeked of extreme overkill. Most of what remained of the impressive intelligence and naval-commando achievement, as usual in our case, was a sour taste.

[hellbilly]

In the last 3 days over 70 missiles were fired into Israel. A bomb was strapped to a phone booth at a Jerusalem bus station, killing one and seriously injuring 3 others. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the house of the Fogel family and murdered Rabbi Fogel, his wife and 3 of his 6 children with a kitchen knife. None of this has been given media coverage.

I hadn't heard about this stuff. It's a little confusing.. why would the MSM not cover these stories? What's the agenda?

[Turd Ferguson]

In the last 3 days over 70 missiles were fired into Israel. A bomb was strapped to a phone booth at a Jerusalem bus station, killing one and seriously injuring 3 others. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the house of the Fogel family and murdered Rabbi Fogel, his wife and 3 of his 6 children with a kitchen knife. None of this has been given media coverage.

I hadn't heard about this stuff. It's a little confusing.. why would the MSM not cover these stories? What's the agenda?

Too busy reporting on Muammar 90 gazillion times per day to report on anything else of interest. Sorry, cant squeeze something like that in........... too much actual work.

[hellbilly]

Same with the Japanese disaster.. what's it take to satiate the public's demand for ChaosTainment these days?

[Turd Ferguson]

what's it take to satiate the public's demand for ChaosTainment these days?

[Diogenes The Cynic]

In the last 3 days over 70 missiles were fired into Israel. A bomb was strapped to a phone booth at a Jerusalem bus station, killing one and seriously injuring 3 others. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the house of the Fogel family and murdered Rabbi Fogel, his wife and 3 of his 6 children with a kitchen knife. None of this has been given media coverage.

I hadn't heard about this stuff. It's a little confusing.. why would the MSM not cover these stories? What's the agenda?

Because the world doesn't care when Jews are murdered.

[Turd Ferguson]

In the last 3 days over 70 missiles were fired into Israel. A bomb was strapped to a phone booth at a Jerusalem bus station, killing one and seriously injuring 3 others. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the house of the Fogel family and murdered Rabbi Fogel, his wife and 3 of his 6 children with a kitchen knife. None of this has been given media coverage.

I hadn't heard about this stuff. It's a little confusing.. why would the MSM not cover these stories? What's the agenda?

Because the world doesn't care when Jews are murdered.

Get more oil.

People will start caring.

[hellbilly]

In the last 3 days over 70 missiles were fired into Israel. A bomb was strapped to a phone booth at a Jerusalem bus station, killing one and seriously injuring 3 others. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the house of the Fogel family and murdered Rabbi Fogel, his wife and 3 of his 6 children with a kitchen knife. None of this has been given media coverage.

I hadn't heard about this stuff. It's a little confusing.. why would the MSM not cover these stories? What's the agenda?

Because the world doesn't care when Jews are murdered.

Hopefully you can relate to my complaints about the same attitude toward whites.

[blackie]

In the last 3 days over 70 missiles were fired into Israel. A bomb was strapped to a phone booth at a Jerusalem bus station, killing one and seriously injuring 3 others. Last week, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the house of the Fogel family and murdered Rabbi Fogel, his wife and 3 of his 6 children with a kitchen knife. None of this has been given media coverage.

I hadn't heard about this stuff. It's a little confusing.. why would the MSM not cover these stories? What's the agenda?

Because the world doesn't care when Jews are murdered.

If hellbilly hadn't heard about any of this stuff, he doesn't pay attention to the MSM, or this thread. Two of those events were covered in this thread. I didn't post about the uptick in missiles/mortars, because people complain about too many jew threads. If you post too much jew news you are anti-semitic. Apparently, you are also anti-semitic if don't post enough jew news.

Just because you haven't heard about this stuff does not mean the MSM isn't covering the stories. It means you aren't paying attention to the MSM.

Obama made statements about this shit, and the MSM covered it.  US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been in Israel since the bomb went of in Jerusalem, and the MSM has been covering him commenting on all this shit.


Anyway, non-Israeli Jews don't even care about murdered Israeli Jews.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=212716

Column One: Israel’s indivisible legitimacy
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
03/18/2011 15:45

Instead of considering what murder says about Palestinian society, media have turned massacre of Fogel family into story about “settlements.”
 
Over the past several years, a growing number of patriotic Israelis have begun to despair. We can’t stand up to the whole world, they say. At the end of the day, we will have to give in and surrender most of the land or all of the land we took control over in the 1967 Six Day War. The world won’t accept anything less.

These statements have grown more strident in the wake of the slaughter of the Fogel family last Friday night in Itamar. For example, on Thursday Ha’aretz columnist Ari Shavit called Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice line the local equivalent of Japan’s nuclear reactors. Like the reactors, he wrote, they seemed like a good idea at the time. But they have become our undoing.

The international community’s response to the Palestinian atrocity in Itamar is pointed to as proof that Israel must surrender. Instead of considering what the savage murder of an Israeli family tells us about the nature of Palestinian society, the world media have turned the massacre of the Fogel family into a story about “settlements.”

Take The Los Angeles Times for example. From the Times’ perspective, the Fogels were not Israeli civilians. They were “Jewish settlers.” They weren’t murdered in their home. They were killed in their “tightly guarded compound.”

And, in the end, the Times effectively justified the murder of the Fogel children when it helpfully added, “Most of the international community... views Israel’s settlements as illegal.”

The Times report was actually comparatively sympathetic. At least it mentioned the murders. Most European papers began their coverage with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s announcement that the government would permit Israelis to build 400 homes in Judea and Samaria.

As for the governments of the world, most were far swifter and more aggressive in their condemnation of Netanyahu’s announcement of the building permits than they were in their condemnation of the murders.

Then there is the US Jewish community.

According to New York’s Jewish Week, there is a new consensus in the American Jewish community that imposing an economic boycott on Israeli communities outside the 1949 armistice lines is a legitimate position. The paper interviewed Martin Raffel, the head of the new Israel Action Network, a multimillion-dollar effort by the Jewish Federations of North America and other major Jewish groups to counter the delegitimization of Israel.

Raffel called the boycott movement misguided, rather than wrong. Then he justified it by arguing, “Being misguided in one’s policies doesn’t mean one necessarily has become part of the ranks of the delegitimizers.”

If that wasn’t enough, Ron Kampeas, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Washington bureau chief, wrote Tuesday that we shouldn’t rush to conclude that Palestinians carried out the attack.

Kampeas wrote, “We do not yet know who committed the awful butchery in Itamar over the weekend.”

WITH AMERICAN Jews taking a lead role in delegitimizing Israel; with the international media ignoring the massacre of the Fogel family and attacking Israel for its response to the event they didn’t cover; and with the US government united with the nations of the world in condemning the government’s decision to allow Israelis who are Jewish to build on land they own, the despair of a growing chorus of Israelis is understandable.

But while understandable, the notion that Israel has no choice but to surrender Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians is wrong and dangerous.

Like his fellow defeatists, Shavit argues that Jewish communities in these areas are the cause of international moves to delegitimize Israel. If they were gone, so the argument goes, then neither the Palestinians nor the international community would have a problem with Israel.

The first problem with this view is that it confuses the focus of Palestinian and international attacks on Israel with the rationale behind those attacks. This is a mistake Israelis have made repeatedly since the establishment of the Fatahled PA in 1994.

Immediately after the PA was set up and IDF forces transferred security control over Palestinian cities and towns in Judea and Samaria to Yasser Arafat’s armies, Palestinian terrorists began attacking Israeli motorists driving through PA-controlled areas with rocks, pipe bombs and bullets.

Then-prime minister and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin blamed the attacks on “friction.” If the Palestinians didn’t have contact with Israeli motorists, then they wouldn’t attack them. So Israel built the bypass roads around the Palestinian towns and cities to prevent friction.

For its efforts, the Palestinians and the international community accused Israel of building “Jews-only, apartheid roads.” Moreover, Palestinian terrorists left their towns and cities and stoned, bombed and shot at Israeli motorists on the bypass roads.

Then there was Gaza. When in 2001 Palestinians first began shelling the Israeli communities in Gaza and the Western Negev with mortars and rockets, we were told they were attacking because of Israel’s presence in Gaza. When the IDF took action to defend the country from mortar and rocket attacks, Israel was accused of committing war crimes.

The likes of Shavit said then that if Israel left Gaza, the Palestinian attacks would stop. They said that if they didn’t stop and the IDF was forced to take action, the world would support Israel.

Shavit himself engaged in shocking demonization of the Israelis living in Gaza. In May 2004 he wrote that they were undeserving of IDF protection and that no soldier should defend them because they weren’t real Israelis.

But then the Palestinians and the international community threw Shavit and his friends yet another curveball. After Israel expelled every last so-called settler and removed every last soldier from Gaza in August 2005, Palestinian rocket attacks increased tenfold. The first Katyusha was fired at Ashkelon seven months after Israel withdrew. Hamas won the elections and Gaza became an Iranian proxy. Now it has missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

As for the international community, not only did it continue blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism, it refused to accept that Israel had ended its so-called occupation of Gaza. It has condemned every step Israel has taken to defend itself from Palestinian aggression since the withdrawal as a war crime.

The lesson of these experiences is that Israeli towns and villages in Judea and Samaria are not castigated as “illegitimate” because there is anything inherently illegitimate about them. Like the bypass roads and the Israeli presence in Gaza, they are singled out because those interested in attacking Israel militarily or politically think are an easy target.

The Arabs, the UN, the Obama administration, the EU, anti-Israel American and Israeli Jews, university professors and the legions of self-proclaimed human rights organizations in Israel and throughout the world allege these Israeli communities are illegitimate because by doing so they weaken Israel as a whole.

If Israel is convinced that it has no choice but to bow to these people’s demands, they will not be appeased. They will simply move on to the next easy target. Israeli Jewish communities in the Galilee and the Negev, Jaffa and Lod will be deemed illegitimate.

In a bid to pretend that the communities in Judea and Samaria are somehow different from communities in the Galilee, proponents of surrender point to the non-binding 2004 International Court of Justice opinion that the communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal.

But Israelis who accept the non-binding opinion as a binding ruling for Judea and Samaria ignore that the opinion also asserted that Israel has no right to self defense.

The same people who think that so-called settlements are illegal also believe that opposition leader Tzipi Livni is a war criminal. The same people who think the so-called settlements are illegal would condemn as a war crime any attempt to enforce the law against irredentist Israeli Arabs.

Israel’s bitter experience proves incontrovertibly that bowing to international pressure just invites more pressure.

SO WHAT can Israel do?

The first thing we must do is recognize that legitimacy is indivisible. In the eyes of Israel’s enemies there is no difference between Itamar and Ma’aleh Adumim on the one hand and Ramle and Tel Aviv on the other hand. And so we must make no distinction between them.

Just as law abiding citizens are permitted to build homes in Ramle and Tel Aviv, so they must be permitted to build in Itamar and Ma’aleh Adumim. If Israel’s assertion of its sovereignty is legitimate in Tel Aviv, then it is legitimate in Judea and Samaria. We cannot accept that one has a different status from the other.

Likewise, it is an act of economic warfare to boycott Israeli products, whether they are made in Haifa or Mishor Adumim. Anyone who says it is permissible to boycott Mishor Adumim is engaging in economic warfare against Haifa.

Once we understand that Israel’s legitimacy is indivisible, we need to take actions that will put the Palestinians and their international supporters on the defensive. There are any number of moves Israel can make in this vein.

For example, following the Palestinian massacre of the Fogel family, Netanyahu highlighted the fact that the PA routinely glorifies terrorist murderers and pays them and their families handsome pensions for their illegal acts of war. He also highlighted the genocidal anti-Jewish incitement endemic in Palestinian society.

While all of this is useful, talk is cheap. It is time to make the Palestinians pay a price for their depravity and to put their international supporters on the defensive.

Specifically, Netanyahu should ask the US to cut off all US economic and military assistance to the PA. Two PA intelligence officers were arrested as part of the Fogel murder investigation.

The US is training and equipping the Palestinian intelligence services. This should stop.

Two days after the massacre in Itamar, the PA dedicated a public square in El-Bireh to terror commander Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi commanded the 1978 bus attack on the coastal highway in which 37 Israelis – including 12 children – were murdered. The PA previously named a street, a dormitory, a summer camp and a sports tournament after her. Several popular songs have been written to glorify her crimes.

The US is underwriting the PA’s budget. This should stop.

Were the government to go after international aid to the PA, not only would it begin a debate in the US and perhaps Europe about the nature of Fatah specifically and Palestinian society generally, it would force the Palestinians’ myriad supporters to justify their support for a society that is defined by its goal of annihilating Israel.

It is hard to stand up to the massive pressure being brought to bear against Israel every day. But it is possible.

And whether defying our foes is hard or easy, it is our only chance at survival. Either all of Israel is legitimate, or none of it is.

At least she realizes the possibility that currently none of Israel is legitimate.

[blackie]

Have you read about Motti Fogel, Udi's older brother? He is pretty awesome. He threw a chair at a rabbi.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/the-private-side-of-a-public-tragedy-1.351740

The private side of a public tragedy
Against the crowds who see the political significance of the murder of the Fogel family of Itamar vis-a-vis the background of their various national goals, one man wishes to remind us that his loved ones lost their lives
By Nir Hasson

Everyone came to the funeral of the Fogel family members murdered in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, from members of the national-religious youth movement Bnei Akiva, in their blue shirts, to the "hilltop youths," with their long sidelocks. All the public leaders, Knesset members, settlement leaders and regional council heads came to the cemetery on March 13 to bury parents Udi and Ruthie, and children Yoav, Elad and Hadas.

The eulogizers' words were aimed at the large crowd, the people of Israel and the prime minister. One spoke about incitement, another about the defense minister's lax policy. Almost all were united in what they deemed the appropriate response to terrorism: building new settlements and neighborhoods.

Against this background, the voice of Motti Fogel, Udi's older brother, stood out. "If I could, I would get rid of everyone here and whisper to you, 'Let's go play soccer one last time,'" he said. "All the slogans about Torah and land settlement, the Land of Israel and the Jewish people try to make us forget the simple fact that you are dead. A person is born to himself, to his parents and his siblings, and he dies to himself, to his children, and in very bad cases also to his parents and his siblings. You are not a symbol or a national event, your life bore a purpose unto itself and we must not let your terrible death become a tool, no matter what for."

A few days later, Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, one of the most important and most extreme of the settler rabbis, came to the home of the Fogel parents in the settlement of Neve Tzuf, near Beit El, where the family was observing the week of mourning. Levanon spent time with the parents and as he was leaving, he said to Motti, "It won't help. It's not private, it's public." A heated conversation ensued. Finally, Motti Fogel said, "Maybe Udi was also punished for the disengagement [from Gaza]?" alluding to Levanon's comment that former president Moshe Katsav had been punished for not speaking out against the disengagement. In the end, Levanon left after Fogel threw a chair at him.

That has been Motti Fogel's only confrontation since the murder and his eulogy, despite the ideological abyss that separates him from his family and the society he grew up in.

"I admit I was apprehensive about how people would respond to what I said at the funeral. But a few people from my parents' area told me they deeply related to what I said and that it was important to say it. The settlers, in quotation marks, are first of all human beings. It sounds very dumb to say this, but they have private lives, and it was important for them to have a private element at the funeral. Levanon is the exception," he says.
Crossing the lines

Fogel, 39, lives in Jerusalem with his wife and their three children. He works as a writer for the financial newspaper Globes and for the weekly entertainment guide Akhbar Ha'ir (City Mouse ). He crossed the lines politically after his army service. He is highly critical of the society in which he was raised, but also feels understanding and compassion for it. The eldest of five siblings, Motti was raised in Neve Tzuf. His father works for Amana, the settlement arm of the Yesha Council of settlements.

"I grew up in a classic Gush Emunim home," he says, referring to the movement that spearheaded the settlement project. But then he adds, "Actually, I'm not sure I know what 'classic' means."

He initially began to change his beliefs after studying the writings of none other than Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the settlers' spiritual father. "It is hard to say when exactly your views change. And it's not a single event, either. But in [the yeshiva] Or Zion, there was a major emphasis on studying Rabbi Kook. I liked his writings very much, and took them very seriously. I remember that one of the things that gave me pause was Rabbi Kook's discussion of the justification for a Jewish nationality. He writes that nationality is fundamentally unacceptable, but that the Jewish people is different from other peoples in the sense that when it looks after itself, it is looking after the whole world. You can take that as a mission and you can take it as fate. If it's fate, it can justify extreme selfishness; if it's a mission, that is something else entirely. I too take it as a given that the Jewish people's mission is to look after the world, every person, so I don't see how that is consistent with ruling another people."

After leaving the yeshiva, Fogel studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There he had another turning point, in a conversation with a Palestinian student. "I remember we were sitting outside the library and talking. She asked me where I was from and I told her. I remember the look of horror on her face. I think the horror is unjustified, but it was authentic horror. It suddenly gave me a different understanding of what we look like," he relates.

Fogel is still religiously observant, and wears a skullcap, but he is also one of the founders of the Egalitarian Minyan of Baka, an Orthodox congregation that aims for equality between men and women in prayer, which meets in a Jerusalem community center. Politically, he has been participating in the weekly demonstrations in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, protesting the creation of a Jewish settlement there.

"When I demonstrate, I know I am expressing views my family does not accept, but I feel I am continuing what I received at home. I definitely see myself as a product of my life; however far I may be, I see myself as very much connected to the home I grew up in."

His home is the basis for his worldview: He opposes the occupation but also opposes the evacuation of settlements. "If we put aside the question of political feasibility, I prefer a binational state. I would prefer the settlements not be evacuated. I don't think evacuation is the path to peace. I don't think creating more distress is the way to do good.

"Personally, it's hard for me to leave places in which I grew up," he says. "I think about the people who are living there, now the third generation. Children who were born to children who were born in the settlements. Irrespective of what they think, they are human beings.

"When [Kadima leader] Tzipi Livni says she wants consolidation in one state, so that it will be a Jewish state, I ask myself what she means by a Jewish state. Because in my view, a Jewish state is not one that clings with all its power to ensure a royal Jewish majority. I also don't think a Jewish state is a state that rules another people who lack the right to vote and other basic rights. What is behind the cliche 'democratic Jewish state'? There are two sides that both believe a Jewish state is one without Arabs. The argument is over how there will be no Arabs, whether we ourselves will withdraw or whether we will expel them. Let's set aside the fact that it's easier to withdraw than to expel people. There is also an element of preserving the balance of power, and that is what interests most of the Israeli bourgeois parties - Labor, Likud, Kadima and also, regrettably, Meretz. The fear of a bi-national state is fear of shifting the balance of power.

"I suggest listening to the settlers' criticism, even if it sounds like slogans. They say, 'Why do you want to evacuate settlements, when Ramat Aviv is also on Arab land?' They are right. Not in the sense that 1967 is the same as 1948. They are right in the sense that it is easier for us to think about evacuating settlers who are not part of the Israeli norm than about eroding the power of those in the center. I simply draw a different conclusion. My conclusion is not that we must not withdraw from any place, but we still have to listen to this critique.

"Udi was far more mischievous than I was, and much more sociable and popular. From the outside, it may have looked like he was becoming more pious religiously, but I think it suited his character. He was a very sociable, very good person. With a permanent smile. I suppose he did not smile all the time, but that's what it looked like. He taught me it can be nice to speak with others."

Connection through Gemara

Udi Fogel, who was two years younger than Motti, worked as a teacher. He taught in the Gaza settlement of Netzarim until the Israeli pullout in 2005, then moved with his family to the West Bank city of Ariel and later to Itamar, where he taught in the post-high school yeshiva. "It looked as though he had found his place there, both in terms of the yeshiva and in terms of self-confidence. It was beautiful to see that," his brother says.

In the past year, the brothers got past a falling out and became close.

"Both of us are learning Gemara and we tried to study together, but it didn't really work, because I study with a completely different approach. But the last time they visited us we suddenly managed to talk about an issue from the Gemara and learned together. For me that was much more meaningful and serious than the question of whether we could talk politics. It made me very happy that we could learn Gemara together. It was moving."

That was a few weeks before the murder.

"I don't know how it will change my life," Motti says. "My natural inclination is to go on as usual. But one of the things I am discovering is that we cannot control our memory. I can't control when I think about Udi. One of the most difficult moments came at the end of the shiva, when we came back here. I was very happy to be home after a week. But I suddenly returned to the moment when I was told, and that was not a pleasant moment."

The murder did not change his political stance. "It only makes things more concrete. The need to reduce the enmity comes closer to me personally, you can't ignore it as much."

Fogel learned about his brother's murder almost a full day after the event. "On Saturday morning we got back from synagogue. We had an army officer visiting. She said, 'Did you hear what a terrible night it was in Itamar?' She forgot Udi lived there. I didn't think it was him. But in the evening, when the phone rang, I thought it must be my father, calling with the news. So in some way I had been prepared. There was lightning, and later thunder."

After learning of the murders, Fogel drove to his parents' home in Neveh Tzuf. "On the way there, we saw a fire burning in the fields opposite the spring," he says. The spring is the site of a dispute between the settlers and Palestinians from the adjacent village of Nebi Saleh. "What will a left-winger think when he sees the fire? That settlers burned the field as part of the 'price tag' policy [of revenge]. I also thought that.

"When we got to the settlement, there were people there who ensured that journalists were kept out. I told them, 'We are not a family that burns fields.' Afterward, one of them told me they didn't know what I was talking about, because the Palestinians had rolled a burning tire into the field and set it ablaze. So, in short, when we see a fire burning, let's not presume who lit it. Maybe we will be better off making an effort to put it out." 

[hellbilly]

Just because you haven't heard about this stuff does not mean the MSM isn't covering the stories. It means you aren't paying attention to the MSM.

You're right. The reason I skim over news stories involving Jews in the Middle East is because I'm so far removed from those issues that it doesn't benefit anyone for me to keep up to date on the details. Details may change but violence in that area between the same groups seems to predate history.

[Sam Gunn (since nobody got Admiral Naismith)]

The media treats Jewish settlers the same way they treated David Koresh.

[Turd Ferguson]

The media treats Jewish settlers the same way they treated David Koresh.

Ok, I'm somewhat ignorant on this subject, but why are they called settlers, and who's land are they settling on?

Seriously, not being a smartass like usual.